Frontispice

of the German 1730

Gichtel Edition

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Today’s sharing from the Blue House of Via-HYGEIA is an extract from Jacob Boehme’s ‘Three Principles of the Divine Essence ”, John Sparow’s 1st. English edition, London, 1648, printed by MS. for H. Blunden at the Castle in Cornhill. Translated by John Sparrow himself, Chapter VII, pages 50 to 51, paragraphs 21,22,23-included.

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21. Thus you may see how God created all things out of nothing, but only out of himself: and yet the Out-birth is not from his essence or substance, but it hath its original from the Darkness. The source of the Darkness is the first Principle, and the virtue or power of the Light is the second Principle, and the Out-birth generated out of the Darkness by the virtue of the Light, is the third Principle; and that is not called God: God is only the Light, and the virtue of the Light, and that which goes forth out of the Light is the Holy Ghost.

22. You have a similitude of this in yourself: your soul which is in you, gives reason to you, whereby you think, consider and perceive : that represents God the Father : The Light which shines in your soul, whereby you know the virtue or power in you and lead and direct or order yourself with, that represents God the Son, or the Heart, the eternal power and virtue: and the mind in which the virtue of the Light is, and that which proceeds from the light wherewith you govern your body, that represents the Holy Ghost.

23. The Darkness that is in you, which longs after the light; that is the first Principle: the virtue or power of the light which is in you, whereby you can see in your mind without bodily eye, that is the second Principle: and the longing power or virtue, that proceeds from the mind, and attracts and fills or impregnates it self, from whence the material body grows, that is the third Principle. And you may understand very exactly, how there is an in-closure stop, or knot, between each Principles; and how God is beginning and the first virtue or power in all things: and you understand, that in this gross sluggish or dull body, you are not in Paradise: for that outward body is but a misty excrementitiously dusky opaque procreation or Out-birth in the third Principle, wherein the soul lies captive, as in a dark dungeon: of which you shall find a very large description, when we come to write about the Fall of Adam.

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